Reconciling your invoices to a job's final account
How a contractor reconciles everything invoiced, credited and received on a job with the client's final account, and settles the last differences.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Construction businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Months after the last brick, the client's quantity surveyor sends the final account. It is the client's statement of what the whole job was worth in the end: the contract sum, adjusted for every variation, remeasurement, daywork, penalty and contra charge, less everything already paid and the retention still held.
The final account is the last real chance to be paid for the job. If you sign it without checking it against your own records, any claim left out, credit forgotten or receipt misallocated is gone for good. This article shows how to reconcile it with what Achekam holds on your side.
What the client's final account contains
Final accounts differ by contract form, but most contain the same building blocks:
- the original contract sum;
- adjustments for provisional sums and prime cost items;
- remeasured quantities, where the contract is remeasurable;
- variations, each with its value;
- daywork;
- deductions: penalties, contra charges and back-charges;
- the total of all previous payment certificates;
- retention held, and when it will be released;
- the balance due to the contractor, or by the contractor.
Your job is to show that every one of those lines agrees with your own records, or to explain why it does not.
The statement of account as your side of the story
On your side, the record is the client's account in receivables. Every progress claim you issued is an invoice: issuing one took the next number in your sequence and posted it as debtors, sales and output VAT. Every payment the client made was recorded against those invoices, and part payments left invoices part-paid. Every concession was a credit note issued from the invoice it corrected.
The server produces a customer statement of account as a PDF, and the screen says whether it was sent. Print the client's statement for the life of the job and put it next to the final account. Look at the age analysis too: receivables are aged into 0-30, 31-60, 61-90, 91-120 and over 120 days, with overdue totals, and anything still open on this client will show there.
Matching claims, credit notes and receipts line by line
Work through the two documents side by side:
| Final account line | Your record | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Previous certificates | Progress invoices | Same number of claims, same values |
| Payments made | Receipts recorded | Same dates and amounts; none allocated to another job |
| Deductions | Credit notes, or balances left open | Each deduction either credited or disputed |
| Variations | Variation invoices or claim lines | Every instructed variation included |
| Retention | Amounts held back | Same total held |
A worked example in words: the final account lists the previous certificates and one fewer payment than your records show. You look at the client's account and find a receipt allocated to the right client but to an invoice from a different job. Re-allocating that receipt to the correct invoice puts both jobs right, and the line on the final account now agrees. The commonest differences are exactly this kind: a payment on the wrong job, a credit note the client never received, or a variation instructed on site that was never claimed because the instruction was verbal.
Mark every line agreed, explained or disputed. The ACCA explains, for the other side of the fence, why a separate record of each account matters and how reconciling supplier statements to those records helps find errors; your client's QS is doing exactly that with your invoices, and you should do the same with theirs.
Retention still to be invoiced
The final account usually shows retention held and when it falls due. If you invoice progress claims net of retention, the retention has never been invoiced; it needs an invoice of its own when it falls due. Note the release dates in your diary now. Invoicing so retention is not chased as overdue explains the approach.
Settling the last differences: credit note, invoice or write-off
Once the differences are agreed, each one is settled with one of four tools:
- A new invoice for amounts the final account accepts but you never invoiced, such as a late variation.
- A credit note from the relevant invoice for amounts you accept were over-claimed. A credit note is always issued from the invoice it corrects, in full or for chosen lines, and any leftover credit is held for the client.
- A receipt allocation: record the final payment against the open invoices.
- A write-off for what will not be recovered. An unpaid debt can be written off once a partner approves.
Deductions you disputed during the job often surface here; recording penalties and contra charges explains how they were held open.
Closing the job's file
A job's file is closed when:
- every invoice for the client on this job is paid, credited or written off;
- retention invoices are raised or diarised with their release dates;
- the signed final account is filed.
Keep the signed final account, your reconciliation and the statement in Documents. Document Centre is a folder-based store where a business uploads files or whole folders, tags and searches them, and a new version keeps the earlier ones, so a revised final account does not overwrite the first.
Before you sign
Never sign a final account on the day it arrives. Set aside time for the reconciliation, mark every line, and send the QS your list of differences in writing. If any certificate during the job came in below your claim, check how the gap was carried; when the payment certificate is less than you claimed covers that case.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
